After the Sudden Fiction
and Flash Fiction
anthologies, editors Shapard and Thomas teamed with Gonzalez to create this stunning compilation of short shorts (under 1,500 words) by venerated and emerging Latino writers. In Andrea Saenz's “Everyone's Abuelo
Can't Have Ridden with Pancho Villa,” the narrator's Grandma Jefa discredits the family legends while holding fast to her own: a prescient dream about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Luna Calderon writes about Dia de Los Muertos
or, as the social studies teacher in her story calls it, “Day Ah Dallas Mare Toes.” In “Imagining Bisbee,” Alicita Rodriguez recounts the making of a ghost town: “Bisbee's inhabitants want to disappear. They use P.O. boxes and first names. They hide under straw mats and melt into the horizon.” In “Miss Clairol,” Helena María Viramontes describes the transformative makeup ritual of a mother: “The only way Champ knows her mother's true hair color is by her roots, which, like death, inevitably rise to the truth.” The spirited mix of writers also includes Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel García Márquez, and Jorge Luis Borges. (Mar.)
